


what I lack

by Neffectual



Series: one step forward, two steps back [4]
Category: Professional Wrestling, Progress Wrestling
Genre: Angst, Emotional Distance, Friendship, Gen, Growing Apart, Long-Distance Friendship, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 03:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: Jimmy and Zack have always been opposite sides of the same coin, but now, whenever Jimmy reaches out into the space where his golden best friend used to be, he finds it cold and empty. He wonders what he did wrong.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written to and title from 'You Don't Know How Lucky You Are' by Keaton Henson, and written to focus on something other than the wave of grief that ambushed me.
> 
> I suppose you could call this pre-slash, although I didn't intend for it to be read that way. Just a close-knit friendship.

He doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, whether it was chair shots and blood or an outstretched hand, whether he’s finally pushed his luck too far and too fast, if he’s finally put himself into a position he can’t get out of with bared teeth in a wild grin that beckons the pain to come. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it, but the feel of it is a wrench in the pit of his stomach, a constant reassurance that he’s never going to be good enough, no matter what he does, that he’s never going to be enough for what’s wanted, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Every word is like the taste of bile – not blood in his mouth, not that, because that speaks to victory and defeat and that’s something he can understand. This – this, there’s no explanation for this, and he can’t find the words to shape a question to ask for one, even if one was to be had.

Without Zack, Jimmy’s not sure he knows who he is anymore. He’s always been the other side to him; always been the dark shadow to his light, always been the bad boy to the good, always been the one to avoid rather than greet, and he’s not sure what to do when the good is taken away, is sucked out of the world, when Zack is no longer an arm’s length away, and is out of reach. Realistically, he knows he could make a quick call, he could send a text, he could get in contact, but it all feels like a message in a bottle, like something hopelessly adrift in a sea of congratulation, praise and adulation for Zack, like all those accolades are going to get in the way of a friend reaching out just to check that he’s not alone in the world. He’s never been alone in the world with Zack by his side, always had his opposite, his antithesis, always had the option of stepping out of his darkness and standing in the reflected light of Zack’s glory, just for a little while.  
  


It’s not always physical distance. They go out, one night, after a show, Jimmy smirking as he orders beers and sees the look of faint horror from the girl behind the bar at the cut above his eyebrow, and when Jimmy gets back to the table, Zack’s gone cold and quiet, in a way he’s never been before. Jimmy could reach out and touch him – a hand on his arm, of bump their knees together, all things he’s done a thousand times before, but it feels like his friend is a million miles away, for all that he’s sat right there. He hands over a beer, and makes idle conversation about the night, but Zack’s replies are distant, like he’s thinking of something miles away, and eventually, Jimmy gives up, just sipping his beer and dreading when Zack will decide it’s time he called it a night and headed back home, when Jimmy will be alone for real, and have to think about why his old friend has gone cold on him.

He’s never worried about sharing Zack before, never worried about him having other friends, because Zack is his antithesis, his other side, the mirror image twin who’s always there, but when he sees pictures now, he wonders about the men behind Zack. Wonders if they know his favourite beer, or what home-cooked meal he misses the most when he’s away, wonders if they know his weirdest phobias, or how anal he is about pairing socks properly. Wonders if they know that when he’s miserable, he takes walks, and doesn’t talk to anyone, except Jimmy. He wonders if they know he exists, when everyone he spends time with would say Zack is his best friend, everyone knows him, everyone grins when he brings Zack up in conversation, or tells an old story they’ve heard a hundred times before. He wonders if they know that Zack once started a bar brawl just to see if he could, that he hates seeing anyone in a match with light tubes, or that he’s squeamish about contact lenses.

He wonders if they know what he feels like, curled up and exhausted, two bodies sharing a single bed that’s impossibly small for two grown men, but is nevertheless a tradition, wonders if there’s someone there for when the nightmares are too much to take, and Zack needs to stop being good and golden and glorious for a moment, and just be small and safe and held until he can come back to himself and shake the demons from his mind. If they don’t, then Jimmy worries about Zack, alone, thousands of miles from home, running from monsters he can never seem to fight off, no matter how much strength he gains, and no matter how many title belts he can collect. If they do, then Jimmy hates all of them with a vicious passion like the fires of Hell. He can’t win, no matter what the truth is, and he’s starting to think that might be his default state of being.  
  


The first time he calls Zack and gets no answer, he thinks nothing of it. They’re both busy guys, they’ve got their own lives to be getting on with, and it’s not imperative that they chat, he just wanted to catch up. By the fourth or fifth, he’s starting to think that he’s being ignored – he’d think something might have happened to Zack, but the prick’s all over twitter, winning more belts and more acclaim and more hearts, and Jimmy wants to reach across the miles and pull Zack back to him, wind him in close and hold him by Jimmy’s side, where he belongs, where he’s always supposed to have been, where he relies on him to be. The fact that Zack doesn’t seem to need him anymore was never part of the plan, and Jimmy realises that somewhere along the way, he’s lost sight of what this is between them. They’re mates, right? Mates look out for each other, yeah? So why has Zack stopped answering his calls, stopped replying to him, stopped praising him for a match well won? What did he do?

It all comes back to that. Jimmy knows it must have been something he’s done, because out of the two of them, he’s the fuck up, he’s the one who makes mistakes. Zack’s the golden boy, and if he were anyone else, Jimmy’d hate the cunt just for existing, but this is Zack, and he’s always been too nice to hate. He’s always been too close to him to hate him, always seen the flaws that make him human, and just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing, and he loves that he gets that, that he can see the man behind the curtain. Zack has always been the other side of the same coin for Jimmy, the two of them circling endlessly like night and day, dark and light, like good and evil, a battle they’ll fight forever, like the chant says, and which will never be settled, always going into another cycle. Without him there to balance it, Jimmy feels off-centre, like there’s nothing for him to stand on, like he doesn’t know who he is without that echo of himself, reflected better and cleaner and neater than he could ever be, to inform his sense of self.

“I don’t know what I did,” he croaks to the answerphone one night, too much alcohol and not enough sleep, “but I’m fucking sorry, alright? I’m fucking sorry, Zack, whatever I did, I’m fucking sorry.”

That night, he sleeps fitfully, drifting in and out of dreams where Zack denounces him, where he’s not good enough, where he’s told that to his face, in front of baying crowds, alone. He can see it so vividly, the look on Zack’s face; apologetic, but resolute, telling him that he can’t be his friend any longer. It’s schoolkid shit, not anything that should scare Jimmy, but he can’t help it when he wakes up, grasping for someone else in the bed who hasn’t been there for years, who was never a permanent fixture, and who was never there to cling to anyhow. When his hand finds cold, empty sheets, he rolls over, grasping the pillow like it can shake the nightmares away, like it can give Zack back and stop this endless gulf of silence that’s opened up between them. He knows that’s not the answer, but it’s late, he’s still half-cut, and he’s full of longing for his best friend, the person who showed him his place in the world simply by being himself, as hard as he can.

In the morning, he calls again. The answerphone doesn’t sound any less impersonal than it did the night before, but he manages to pull himself together enough to leave something halfway coherent.

“Ignore last night, yeah, mate? You know what I’m like after a few drinks.”

The thing is, Zack does know what he’s like after a few drinks, and maudlin isn’t his usual tone. Zack’s spend more drunken nights with him than Jimmy can count, and so Zack would know that this was out of character for him. Or at least, the Zack he knew would realise that. This Zack, the new one, shiny and waxen like a model of himself, doesn’t seem to know Jimmy at all.

**Don’t worry about it.**

The message is terse, short, and impersonal. Zack could have been writing to anyone, and it says something that it’s this response, after so many months of silence, that makes Jimmy break, hurling his phone at the wall and digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands hard enough to break the skin. Jimmy’s been saying for months that this isn’t his Zack, that this isn’t right, but now he’s faced with something worse than that. Maybe it isn’t Zack who’s changed; maybe it’s him, maybe Jimmy finally crossed a line he never knew was there, and Zack saw that and saw what he’s become, and didn’t like it. Maybe he grew tired of having to answer every dark little deed of Jimmy’s with something brighter and bolder, maybe he grew tired of being the good to Jimmy’s evil. Maybe he never liked being that to start with.  
  


Deleting Zack’s number should feel like a stab to the gut, should feel like the first sting of skin opening in a match, should feel like waking up the next day and cataloguing a world of hurt. The fact that it simply feels like Jimmy’s been buried in ice water for the past months says something about how bad it’s been. Zack is golden sunlight on the surface of the water, and Jimmy is what lurks beneath, and he was a fool to ever think that they had anything in common, that they were ever going to last beyond a teenage bond that, in the end, dissolved years before they realised. He buried himself for so long in something that wasn’t even real, something as fake as everyone likes to say wrestling is, something more false than anything he’s ever said in a ring. Zack was never his.

If he wakes up in the mornings sometimes and reaches for his phone to see what Zack’s said, no one’s there to tell. And on the worse days, when his hand skates across empty sheets and finds nothing to cling to, and he feels unmoored – well, biting a bruise into himself isn’t something anyone’s going to comment on. He has enough bruises. In the end, he can see it was always going to come down to this. Zack is good, and clean, and golden, and all Jimmy was ever going to do was tarnish him with everything he lacked, everything he couldn’t give, everything he never had. Zack is good, and clean, and golden – and nothing that Jimmy could ever deserve.


End file.
